Zero Hour
by Shadsie
Summary: The final fight of the Champions while they were in flesh and blood. One by one, their war-cries and screams of defeat deafened the com-link between the Divine Beasts. Mipha brought up the rear as the healer. She had a low-level mental bond with them all, with the Hylian princess and with an ill-fated Hero. Perhaps it was fitting that Vah Ruta was the last to fall.


**ZERO HOUR**

 **A Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Fan Fiction**

* * *

"Vah Nabooris is on the move!"

"Vah Medoh is airborne!"

"Vah Rudania is ready to roll!"

"Vah Ruta – all systems functional!"

Mipha thought it appropriate for some reason that she was the last to sound off. She'd typically taken up the rear guard as the Healer among the Champions, ready to assist the others if need be – a fine fighter, but one that did not prefer it. The Champions were all able to communicate with one another through the com-link system present in the Divine Beasts via the slates used to coordinate the terminals that powered them. The Four, additionally, could keep tabs on Princess Zelda via the core Sheikah Slate. The only individual among the Champions lacking a communications link was Link, but that hardly mattered since he was with Zelda.

Mipha didn't need technology to keep tabs on that boy, anyway. She'd learned early on that she developed a low-level psychic bond with the people that she healed and that it was the strongest with people she had healed frequently and with those she'd healed of major injuries and illnesses. She could not read minds or see through others' eyes. She had no voices in her head other than her own and the occasional annoyingly catchy song. She felt no acute pain from the subjects of her gift, but she did experience a general feeling of how they were and a sense for their emotions.

All of the Champions were pensive right now – on pins and needles. Mipha felt a distinct surge of ferocity from Urbosa. She felt something akin to giddy joy from Daruk – a chance to test the mettle of Vah Rudania, the ultimate chance to "play with the toy." Revali was cool and confident – a mask he was trying to wear over his apprehension – and he was perhaps overconfident, Mipha thought.

From Zelda she felt nothing but anxiety and grief. No one had expected Ganon to just erupt from the castle as he had. Hyrule had been preparing for him. Prophets had been issuing their dire warnings and the Signs of the Cycle had been making themselves known. "Ganon" was a known-evil that had always been beaten back by a member of the Hylian Royal Family and whomever the ancient sword had chosen to be its master. In times past, the people had not quite known how to handle the "demon king," but through the ages, they had learned. Through the rediscovery of the lost technology, Hyrule was ready this time – so the people had hoped – and then the Calamity had come right to Hyrule's center. Zelda's father was there, not to mention the countless staff and the people the princess had grown up with. Everyone that Zelda had counted a friend outside of the Champions was right in the thick of it as well as her only family. Mipha knew that Lady Zelda did not get on as well with her father as she did with hers, but the grief she felt from the young Hylian woman was pronounced.

Also, that she was afraid she was going to fail.

Mipha did her best to send out a wave of encouragement. She spoke directly into the com-link to Zelda's slate: "Not only do you have the line of your ancestors on your side," she said, "you have something that they did not. You have us!"

'That's right!" barked Daruk.

"Would that your predecessors had one as magnificent as I to help them," Revali boasted.

"My score with Calamity Ganon is bound up in the pride of my people!" Urbosa spoke forth. "You can bet our victory will be the stuff of songs!"

The Champions had used their command-slates to teleport to their respective Divine Beasts. Their hands were on their consoles and they were on the march. The Sheikah researchers in charge of the Guardians were standing by. Ganon may have made a surprise-attack, but the Champions were going in for a full-on assault. The plan in light of the Calamity's central position was for the Beasts to converge upon the castle from four points and to engage their energy-cannons in synchronization. The Guardians would march between them, taking out monsters as they spawned. Once the Darkness was weakened and there was an inroad, Link – the golden-boy with the sword – was to deliver the coup de grace'.

It was like something out of the legends, yet, the situation was not optimal. Mipha knew that many lives had been lost in an instant when the Champions had seen the smoke rise up from the castle grounds. Princess Zelda had yet to awaken her birthright. She'd returned from the Spring of Wisdom in failure. There was no way of knowing if it would awaken in time for a critical strike. No other power in Hyrule's history had been effective against Ganon save the Master Sword. As it was, the fight could very well come down to Link's skill, even with the aid of the Divine Beasts. There were no guarantees. Already people were dead.

Mipha could feel Link's emotions above those of all of the others. He was angry. The dominating sensation she got from him was a grit-anger at the audacity of the Calamity to come as it had, to kill his comrades among the Hylian knights at the castle without warning. There was fear, too, and a lot of it.

Everyone who knew Link remarked on his courage. It was the trait that was said to dominate every Hero chosen by Sword. There wasn't much that Link was openly afraid of, but Mipha knew, as all wise people do, that courage is anything but an absence of fear. It was the will to spite it. Still, Mipha felt her heart flutter uncomfortably at the "unsteadiness" she felt from the knight. He did not know if they were going to be enough. He also knew that even if they won that this may very well be his last day. Of legends told of heroes-past saving nations and the world, the parades in their honor sometimes featured decorated coffins or scattered ashes.

Vah Ruta plowed through Zoras' River, its movements an extension of Mipha's own. The connection was intuitive, much like her bond with the other Champions. She had healed them all at one time or another. She remembered taking care of Urbosa when she'd gotten a fierce wound from a demon carver after a lost _voe_ she'd found in the desert turned out to be a disguised Yiga assassin with a contract out on her. She'd come out better in the fight that ensued, but would have bled out if she hadn't been brought to Mipha in a timely manner.

The Champions' Healer had found Daruk especially difficult to treat, which is why she practiced on him often. Healing gifts among the Zora had much to do with water – the manipulation of fluids in the body Gorons were a dry species, their bodies composed of minerals. Working her healing-energies through muscles that were literally rock-hard was a challenge she took on Daruk's request after his intense workouts. He claimed that her touch was better than a hot spring, but she was not sure she believed it.

She'd taken an arrow out of Revali once. It was not gained in a fight with a monster, but by a Hylian traveler who'd gotten the dumb idea that he could shoot a hawk from the sky. A case of mistaken identity had led to the proud Rito not being able to fly for a week, even with her help.

Mipha had healed herself many times – all minor things. Zelda had become her patient many times for exhaustion. Link, well…Mipha had practically honed her skills on him during their childhood. While her first memory of successfully healing another person was curing her baby brother of a stomachache, Link was her first patient outside her species. He'd broken an ankle trying to climb up rain-slicked rocks close to the place they liked to dig up snails by the river – so certain that he could make it to the top. Down he went with piercing scream and Mipha was there to ease the pain while she told little Sidon to run and get Sergeant Seggin. He was carried to the Zoras' Domain-proper and that was the day that Link found out that the friends he'd started playing with outside his family's home by the river were royalty. It didn't change their relationship much. They still had mud-fights and he still preferred to call her "Mipha" rather than "Princess," which was refreshing for the girl.

Almost every time Link came running to the spots where she and her friends played to meet them, he was covered in scratches from berry-bushes or scraped up from running too fast and falling. He once got a broken nose from fighting an octorock with a wooden training-sword his father had given him. Mipha knew that the boy was capable of feeling pain; he just didn't seem to have the attention-span to care in those far gone days. It was largely because of him that Mipha had become a certified expert on treating Hylians.

The boy had become more cautious and quiet when he'd taken up serious training with his father, who was a Hylian knight. It was his dream to enter the Hylian military and to train at the school for knights in Castle Town. He and Mipha had done spear-training alongside each other when he came home on break and could visit Zoras' Domain. She had encountered and developed a connection with Vah Ruta before he had earned his soldiers' rank. She had become a Champion before he had.

In fact, it had happened "by accident" with him. He was on a patrol of a heavily wooded area that held a lot of rumors, investigating word of monsters that had come from that area. The appearance of monsters in the land and the rise in boldness of their attacks on villages and roadways was a sign of the growing power of Ganon's ancient threat. Link had been with his squadron when he'd spied a sword resting in a pedestal before a great tree and got curious about it. He's said later that he'd just had in mind to add to his collection and to deprive any wandering bokoblin that might be in the area of arms. He'd joked that when he'd heard the Great Deku Tree talk to him that he was glad that he was wearing brown pants under his armor for how sharply he was startled, but said that he ultimately did not need them because the energy he'd felt from the sword was strangely calming. It was when he'd seen his fellow soldiers all take knees before him as they saw the sword lifted up in the air that he knew that something serious was going on.

Every Hylian schoolchild as well as every young Zora, Goron, Rito and Gerudo knew the legends passed down about the Master Sword. Everyone who knew Link knew what taking the sword entailed. He would not have been able to lift it if he was not an incarnation of the Spirit of the Hero. Link – whom Mipha had seen grow from a reckless, excitable child, as loud as any other Hylian boy into a somewhat serious teenager determined to his dreams (but one who still spoke of them) had grown, quite suddenly, downright taciturn.

After being assigned as Zelda's personal guard, Mipha only saw him when the Champions were meeting. Zelda felt that she could confide in her, princess to princess. Mipha always kept an open manner and a listening ear. Princess Zelda found Link to be frustrating. She spoke of him as a silent shadow who was always watching and she could never quite puzzle out what was on his mind. Mipha told her that she knew a different side of Link, or, at least – had known one.

"I think he's just grown more contemplative," Mipha had told her once. "He's in charge of something sacred now. In truth, I worry over him, too. He's become like some of my patients – the ones that have survived something very serious. It is something I have found with people who almost lose their lives: they seem to get a little wiser somehow and they are often shaken. There is something that comes with taking one's survival seriously. I wager he is taking his duties in a similar light."

"Perhaps I should try to talk with him as someone more than a servant," Zelda agreed, "Though I am at a loss at how to broach a conversation."

"He is the avatar of courage," Mipha answered, "but from my experience, try not to spook him."

Zelda and Link had developed a better relationship after he'd done his duty in thwarting an attempt on her life. Mipha was relieved when she saw Link smile again – more and more often. The Champions grew in their bonds as they researched the archeological digs and learned to pilot the Vahs. They met together, traveled together, ate together – Link becoming the "chef" among them as he really seemed to like cooking and, at times, they fought creatures of darkness that were growing bolder and more numerous around the provinces together.

Mipha was always fairly forward in her feelings with Link – as a friend, but she'd found herself dodging questions and acting a little shier toward him of late. It wasn't just his growing introversion that had her stepping away of asking him things for fear of being rude, it was just a little bit of fear of how he might react once she made some of her growing romantic feelings toward him known. She knew that he liked her. She couldn't read his thoughts, but she could read his face, and through the healer-patient bond, she had a reasonable guess as to the state of his heart.

Of late, he'd become a bit torn. His loyalty to Princess Zelda was a matter of duty, but feelings of friendship had been growing for her and Mipha could sense that in all the time they'd spent together that she was beginning to capture his heart. However, Mipha knew that she already held Link's heart and that he was not entirely sure of Zelda's feelings toward him. She could get a sense that he liked them both – and was falling in love with them both. Mipha knew that if she suggested it first, that Link would gladly accept a life together with her – even with the problems inherent in relationships between Hylians and Zoras.

Her tutor, Muzu, had encouraged her from childhood to treat Link as a pet, since Hylians were short-lived compared to Zora. An old family-friend, a member of the court, however, had told Mipha stories while she was growing up of her first husband, a Hylian long-buried and how the time they'd spent together was something she wouldn't give up for all the world, even though she'd paid a high price in grief as she'd watched him age without her. There was no "growing old together" for a couple comprised of a Hylian and a Zora, but if the pair could accept the price, the experience could be beautiful. Indeed, Mipha had seen the Hylian lifespan first-hand. While her little brother Sidon was still toddling about on tiny legs, Link had grown from a "tadpole" into a young man. She'd be robbing both cradle and grave if she confessed to him, but she did not care.

Father approved of Link as a potential mate for Mipha. She knew this. It was surprising since it would yield no grandchildren. It would be up to Sidon, in the future, to provide royal heirs by blood. Heirs by adoption, both Zora and Hylian honorary-Zora were an option.

After this fight, if they all made it out alive, she would definitely present Link the engagement-armor. She determined this of herself as she piloted Vah Ruta.

Strange… the Divine Beast was veering to the left. She had not commanded it to do so. Mipha sighed and re-adjusted the controls and her mind-link to the machine. She noticed a black oil slick in the corner of the control-room. She hoped that the shell hadn't sprung a leak of some kind. No one was as well-versed on the Divine Beasts or the Guardians as the long-dead Sheikah creators, so there were many things even the intuitive-pilots did not know.

The Zora princess was suddenly struck through with a dread feeling. It ran cold up her spine and clenched her heart like a monster's hand. She could pinpoint the sudden chill's source as Zelda.

An instant later, the com-link screeched to life. "The Guardians! Something's wrong!" Zelda's voice cried. "They're malfunctioning!"

From her place in the river, Mipha could hear a cacophony of explosions. It sounded like the test-firings of the Guardian's cannons she'd attended. When she saw through Vah Ruta's optics, she could see fires in the distance in the forests bordering Hyrule Field.

"Oh, Goddess! They're turning on our soldiers!"

"Wait, what?" Daruk grunted through the com-link.

"Be careful!" Mipha admonished.

"Vah Nabooris has stopped responding to my commands!" Urbosa barked over the slates. "It is walking back toward the inward desert. I'm leaving my console to assess the terminals."

"Oh, what have we here?" Revali asked openly, "It seems that Vah Medoh, while still in the air, is turning circles without my command. I, too, must assess the terminals to bring this Beast to heel."

The next sound over the com-link was an explosion and the scream of a dying horse.

"Link! Zelda!" Mipha cried.

This time, to Mipha's surprise, it was Link's voice that came over the communications.

"I'm taking Princess Zelda to Kakariko Village! We are falling back! That's an order! We're alive, but our horses are not! Proceeding on foot! Stand by! I'll return to each of you when I can!"

"What's happening?" Mipha asked everyone and no one in particular.

The oil slick in the corner grew and bulged. A stalk from it grew and Mipha found a baleful glowing eye staring straight at her.

Vah Ruta's controls were jammed. She was dead in the water.

"What in the - !" came Urbosa's voice over the com-link. "I am not alone in Vah Nabooris. I'm stalled until I can fight this thing off."

"Likewise!" Revali spoke. "There seems to be an unwanted tourist in Vah Medoh. I need to take care of this. Where is Link? Is the little soldier-boy even willing to help us?"

"He's…he's getting Princess Zelda to safety," Mipha said, shaking as she spoke into the com-link. She stared at the eye and the eye was staring back at her. "He told us to stand by. He'll come as soon as he can."

"I've got a big problem here in Vah Rudania, as well," Daruk said. "Some kind of dark creature. Huge sword. My toy's all stalled up. Just let me pound this thing into gravel and I'll get back to you."

Mipha continued to stare uneasily at the eye as she tried to bring Vah Ruta back to life. "Come on, girl… you can do it! We're together, remember?"

That was when she heard deep laughter behind her.

"By the Sages, this thing is fast!" Urbosa's voice carried.

"A little wind won't ruffle my feathers, ruffian!" yelped Revali.

"Think I'm scared of a little fire?" Daruk barked to whatever had invaded his Divine Beast. "I live on an active volcano!"

"I've got a problem, too!" Mipha said as she turned around and saw a black blob congealing up from the water that was rapidly leaking into the interior of Vah Ruta. She reached for her trident, which she'd kept near the control console. The creature raised an enormous spear of light.

"What are you?" she asked with a scowl.

She felt the answer more than she heard it.

"Ganon – Waterblight."

It threw the hard-light spear at her. She dodged. She used the pooling water for cover and propelled herself to the far end of the room. The Waterblight teleported behind her and threw her down with a black tendril. She attempted to stab at it, but it's "body" was hard to define.

She managed to dodge it again. She needed arrows. Link was not here. He was good with a bow.

"Return Vah Ruta to me!" Mipha screamed. "She is not yours!"

The laughter echoed inside the Beast's great stone interior. The glowing blue spear sailed right toward her.

Images flashed in Mipha's mind, coming to her in split-instant pictures, like rifling through the "snap shots" that Princess Zelda liked taking on the Sheikah Slate. It was if she was looking through the eyes of all of her friends at once.

She saw the large round belly of an up-ended Goron. Daruk lay prone upon the floor of one side of Vah Rudania. He did not bleed, as Gorons did not have blood like that of organic creatures. His stony skin was broken and covered in char-marks. Mipha felt herself reaching out with a big, stony, spectral hand as Vah Rudania pitched sideways and Daruk was sent to fall into the glowing magma below one of the openings in the Beast's mechanics.

Her sight then fell to a chesty front clad in gold and jewel colors over bronzed skin. A deep slice, burned at the edges by a hard-light sword greeted her vision. A distinct feeling of dropping followed.

After that image came the sight of a ball of feathers with a broken neck, bow still strapped to its back, pitched off the side of a banking great stone wing.

Two figures running through a forest in sudden downpour. Blue and magenta lights glowing in the distance. Heartbeats pounding in terror. Life. Determination. Failure.

The com link in Vah Ruta crackled in an electric, static sound and then fell silent.

The darkness dissipated. Mipha came to herself to be met with the sound of dripping water in the stone interior of Vah Ruta. She felt no pain, nor did she feel a sense of cool or warmth or anything else. She discovered the distinct sensation that she was floating, but had nowhere to go.

She looked at her feet – or where her feet should have been. Growing apprehension gripped her. She startled. After that she stared.

A body with sleek red scales – small – smaller than she thought she had been lay in shallow water. The eyes were closed, the jaw clenched. The midsection bore a fierce wound. If she hadn't known what she was looking at, Mipha might have been able to pretend she was looking at a cleaned fresh catch in the market, a gutted trout.

She "knelt" before herself – or at least an approximation of kneeling for someone who was still a form of consciousness but no longer was tied to a body. "No," she said, running a spectral hand over her head-fins. "Get up. Come on! Get up! This can't happen! Hyrule needs us! Princess Zelda needs us! Link needs us!"

The baleful eye in the oil slick closed, as did others that were infecting the Divine Beast.

Mipha "stood" in silence for a long time. She wasn't getting up. She turned away from looking at her own dead body and back to the console. The Divine Beast had nothing to respond to – nothing warm and living to guide it.

Mipha noted that she was not being visited by her ancestors. She had hoped to meet Ruto when she'd died, but no one was coming for her, it seemed. She looked back at her corpse. The Waterblight Ganon was gone, having vanished back into the waters from whence it had come. She remembered stories about how regret could bind a soul to the physical realm. She felt an oppressive shadow over her. This place was not only her tomb, it was her cage.

She felt some sense that the other Champions had just suffered the same fate. She could not get a bead on them, lacking her body and with them lacking bodies, but she knew.

Was Link going to come? Did he survive? Would he free her? 

* * *

A week passed and the oil slicks in Vah Ruta vanished. Mipha's spirit managed to communicate with the magic present in the machine just enough to guide it to East Reservoir Lake. Something had freed the Beast temporarily and she could intuit just enough energy to get it to move a short space.

She was especially glad to get it to pitch backward enough to allow her macerating remains to slide down into the depths of the lake. The Lightscale Trident followed. She could feel that it was eventually found by Sergeant Seggin after it had washed through the floodgates and down the river to rest along a bank.

Most of her time was spent in a self-imposed spiritual equivalent of "sleeping." She could feel her people near, her friends, teachers, and her family. Grief over her. Animosity for Hylians. Blaming of Link for getting her into something she had never returned from. She was sure she could hear her little brother asking Father "When's big sis gonna come home? Where is she?"

She could feel Zelda holding off Ganon. She'd heard the tales from her silent prison told among her people coming to the lake to swim and picnic about the "ill-fated Hylian princess" keeping the Calamity under lock and trying to destroy it "until the rise of the next Hero." The tales grew more distant as time wore on. She felt the deaths of a couple of would-be Zora heroes who tried to fight the lynel that had taken up residence on the nearby mountain. Their spirits were able to move on, unlike hers.

Most of her people were sure "that damned Link" had died, but for reasons that her spirit could not explain, she felt like he still had a body. She tried to sense for him. She could feel the bound spirits of the other Champions vaguely, but Link felt neither trapped nor moved-on.

In her half-sleep state, she did not know how many years had passed until Vah Ruta suddenly creaked to life again, without her command. The oil slicks and the eyes were back. They would have watched her in baleful light if they could see her. She could not communicate with Ruta anymore and in her "waking" moments wanted the machine to stop. It had begun a rampage of destruction, bringing torrential rains and overfilling the lake.

She felt her brother near, trying to get in. Ruta's electric fields were keeping him away. Mipha desperately did not want him to get killed.

Her hope was renewed when she thought she felt Link in the world again. His emotions were distant. She remained waiting, trapped in her silent stone prison in the center of a lake.

When Link had entered Vah Ruta, Mipha watched unseen and attempted to speak to him, mustering all of her remaining energy to manifest a voice. He was her Link – the very same Hylian she had known and loved – not a reborn hero, but someone who had slept for a long time, kept from aging, mended of serious wounds.

She remembered him, but he did not remember her.

Everything they'd had together had died at Zero Hour. He had still kept his promise to return to her, for what it was worth. 

* * *

**END.**

 **Shadsie, 2017**


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